Carl Packman2015-03-03T15:42:42-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=carl-packmanCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Carl PackmanGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Science of Selena Gomeztag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.36232242013-07-19T10:20:56-04:002013-09-18T05:12:01-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
Margaret McAllister, an educational psychologist specializing in children's behavior, believed, when interviewed in 1993, that child fame is dangerous. An overdose of adult approval and lack of interaction with other children, she suggested, will be damaging!

When you get to what she called a "Culkin super-star level" things start to become "unnatural and damaging." "While recognizing their talent," she warned parents of stars, "[you] should avoid giving [your] child the idea that it is particularly special".

Indeed Michael Jackson himself was self-described as the Peter Pan of pop and said he didn't have a childhood, something he tried to rekindle as an adult, often with dubious results.

Another child star Mary-Kate Olsen once told Marie Claire magazine that "I would never wish my upbringing on anyone ... but I wouldn't take it back for the world." This conflict is easy to sympathize with.

The effects of childhood fame are relived as an adult, too. Paul Peterson, who was the child star on the Donna Reed Show in the sixties, noted that: "people would come up to me and say 'Gee, I used to love you' and I would agonize over what I ever did to make them unlove me'.

David Giles, a reader in media psychology at the University of Winchester, interviewed a childhood star for a paper he wrote called Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame for the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology in 2009. He found that "for the former child star at the age of ten, the experience of going from a "neighborhood kid" to a famous TV personality overnight was life-altering."

"The famous person's being-in-the-world is impinged on, in that he or she "can't just go anywhere.""

The risks are clear: childhood fame could impinge upon "true" or "pure" childhoods, lead to substance abuse, make relationships more difficult, and give brats a free pass for precociousness.

But is it necessarily so?

I was struck in a recent interview in the Guardian by the groundedness of Selina Gomez. Despite the fact that she has 15.6m Twitter followers, millions in album sales, tens of millions in box office dollars, she is not the stuck up enfant terrible that the professors would suppose. She speaks honestly about her "shelf-life" and how she only feels she has about 5 years left to achieve her goals. Hardly the typical precocious brat that "concerned" psychologists typify when "studying" childhood fame.

As the Guardian interview notes:

Gomez is not so media trained that she can get through an entire interview without seeming to conjure a single independent thought, and she makes engaging company, frequently poking fun at herself.

Rather than showing sever damage, which the academics above would prefer to display, Gomez demonstrates exacting self-awareness. This is neither the hubris that studies prefer to show, nor is it demonstrating a behavior that should prompt stuffy suits to weep over her "crazy" human condition. She's just as normal.

Further, there's no worry about her lack of peer attention. It almost feels today like only young people are famous, old people can hardly keep up. What concerns Gomez the most is what concerned most of us when we were 19, namely love. She doesn't name names (we all know anyway) but when talking about privacy she says: "You're young and you don't know how to be. You don't think: 'Now I have a boyfriend - let's keep it super-private and low key,' because that's not what you're thinking about. You're thinking about: 'Oh my God, we're holding hands!' You're just thinking about stuff like that. Everybody falls in love and you would never want to hide something you're so happy about."

As I was saying, it's so easy to berate young fame, but that's because of the propensity for old people to patronize young people. I say live and let live. Not everybody is going to wave babies over balconies or divorce parents, so we should stop sticking our noses in where it's not needed.]]>We Need to Talk About the Mentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32796612013-05-15T11:16:24-04:002013-07-15T05:12:01-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
The answer to this is very easy: idiots. Masculinity was, and is, perceived to be power. Even where a woman is powerful we ascribe to her active, masculine attributes. Similarly where a male is lacking in power, we attribute to him passive, feminine attributes.

David Kutcha, in his book The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity, noted the class structure of power, saying: "power is achieved through forsaking the feminine and postponing pleasure, in constant suppression of an Oedipal desire for fancier dress."

It was ever thus. The aristocratic male, wearing breeches that Anne Hollander in her book Seeing through Clothes described as "unpractical light colours of fawn or yellow or grey or white", would effectively show off by exposing the bulge of his testicles.

The notion of hegemony and power has for so long been aligned to revealing one's masculinity in a crass way. To take an example Martin Amis, reviewing Iron John by Robert Bly for the London Review of Books in 1991, pointed out that from 1792 (the year of the release of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women) until about 1970, there was the enlightened man whose calling in life was 'getting away with everything'.

We might be reminded, here, of laddish wideboys bragging about their weekend infidelities, or boardroom bullies bemoaning the 'little lady' at home.

As Amis understands it 'getting away with everything' was a political project in the becoming of man. Showing off was still that preferred form of showing masculine power, but doing whatever the hell he felt like was that form of power structure common to aristocratic man as lower class man.

Enlightened man may have given women concessions (we may think of voting) but this in turn highlighted further the power relation at play (or, to misquote Emma Goldman, if voting did anything to change hegemonic masculine discourse, they probably wouldn't have allowed for it).

Amis concluded by saying: "Post-1970, the enlightened man became the new man, who isn't interested in getting away with anything - who believes, indeed, that the female is not merely equal to the male but is his plain superior." The trouble is this is plainly untrue. If man today predicated his philosophy on this, would gender inequality exist in the way it does?

Perhaps I am wrong about this - but then this is the problem. Diane Abbott MP, speaking at Demos today, says men "no longer ask themselves what it means to be a man." And she is right. This vacuum has not only allowed for spurious analyses like that of Martin Amis, but has done little to counter its definition falling in to the wrong hands.

Abbott says porn has informed sexual relations and consumerism has drawn profit from promoting erroneous gender differences, which has in turn informed personality.

Identity is no longer bottom up, but instead created by PR bottom feeders.

The photographer David Gamble once carried out a project of photographs dealing with the problem of contemporary masculinity. When asked what prompted his project he answered: " after 20 years of feminist literature, there seemed a distinct lack of anything truly male". This is a problem for feminism, too.

While masculinity is ignored it becomes a gift, open to hostile voices, susceptible to the germs of sexism and homophobia. And it problematises the lives of those who don't fall for its appeal.

It was reported recently that suicides rose among both men and women "but the problem was most acute among men in their early 40s, where the rate rose to its highest level in almost two decades". On seeing this we are allowed to ask whether this is more than just a coincidence.

Will Self, whose project Perfidious Man was carried out alongside David Gamble, said the problem of masculinity is that it doesn't know what it wants: "A makeover or an undoing, a retread or a retrenchment?" This is ultimately true, and this is no good thing at all.

Yes, we know that it's all nonsense, it's a construct. But this helps nothing. Corporates are out there filling that void with high ideals which line the pockets of consumer capitalist leeches. Or worse, masculinity becomes a synonym for that highly intolerant character who fears gays and women.

Diane Abbott is absolutely right - we need to talk about the men. The expectations to be a certain type of person, if you're a man, are untenable and unattractive. A conversation on what masculinity actually is, is crucial.]]>The Feminist Music Revolution: From Babes in Toyland to Beyoncetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29160152013-03-20T11:52:39-04:002013-05-20T05:12:02-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/writing recently for the Guardian about her new book, reflects on the twentieth year anniversary of riot grrrl - a feminist punk movement concocted of bands like L7 and Babes in Toyland, that shot female musicians into the limelight and challenged the male-dominated world of alternative music.

"March 1993", she says, "and a [musical] storm is about to hit... The new ethos is screamed loud and clear: girls can have the stage, and they can run the show".

It certainly did that. As Ablaze writes:

To be a girl in 1990s America meant being fed on media lies that to be acceptable you must be impossibly thin and as pretty as a photoshopped picture. The official line is that you have equality with boys, yet your reproductive rights are being eroded. You have a high chance of being raped, sexually harassed or sexually abused, and a very low chance that any perpetrator gets convicted, and you'll be told you deserved it anyway because of what you wore or where you went. Want to scream? Want to make some noise? You might, but you're only going to get told to shut up and stop making a fuss, so what's the point?

Despite the fact that the music industry was run in exactly the same fashion, riot grrrl spurred on an angry generation of female musicians to take up arms, as well as guitars, and fight back against the patriarchy, both in the record label boardrooms and across society in general.

Ablaze's own fanzine, aptly called Ablaze!, did much to generate the talk about riot grrrl and what it meant, what the fight was, who the fight was aimed at and how women could get organised. Addressing the scene, the fanzine also acted as a political voice, sold or handed out on the streets outside gigs by English bands such as Huggy Bear.

One of the main feminist criticisms of the 'zines like Ablaze! was that the reach for its audience was rather limited. Though riot grrrl was explosive it was still niche. The worth of the message was so that some feminists felt it needed to be echoed to more people, who were perhaps less inclined toward punk rock.

Caitlin Moran in her seminal book How To Be A Woman wrote, raving about riot grrrl, said that:

"the kind of girls who really need a hardcore feminist movement - in council blocks, listening to Radio 1, fantasising about New Kids On The Block - are unlikely to come across a photocopied Riot Grrrl fanzine being handed out outside a Sebadoh gig. Any revolution worth its salt needs to get its message across to as many people as possible".

So years after has the message widened out? Today we don't have the New Kids On The Block, but their equivalent in popular culture - who many girls are listening to today - are they spreading the message? Are those girls, who Moran says really need a feminist movement, catered for?

Moran, again in How To Be A Woman, talks about her encounter with Lady Gaga, who at the time was being touted as the "next big feminist icon", explaining her particular brand of this as for:

"gay equality, sexual equality, political activism, tolerance and getting shit-faced on the dance floor whilst busting out some serious moves. And wearing a lobster on her head."

"I think I am a feminist in a way. It's not something I consciously decided I was going to be; perhaps it's because I grew up in a singing group with other women, and that was so helpful to me. It kept me out of so much trouble and out of bad relationships ... I love being a woman and I love being a friend to other women. I think we learn a lot from our female friends - female friendship is very, very important. It's good to support each other and I do try to put that message in my music".

Riot grrrl was a tremendous step in the feminist political becoming, and channelled a very serious political message through the medium of music to attract multiple crowds. But its inability to reach further feeds into a very vibrant debate about popular feminism and one cloaked in "esoteric theory".

Today popular artists like Beyonce and Lady Gaga are taking a similar message to the riot grrrls to a wider audience and ensuring it is one that speaks to real life - for which we have popular feminism to thank.]]>The Meaning of Justin Biebertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28848412013-03-17T19:00:00-04:002013-05-17T05:12:02-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
The recent spat he had with photographers, on the face of it, seem to confirm those fears - Bieber is lashing out, becoming irritable and needs help. Collapsing on stage, vomiting, sending out odd pictures and rants on Instagram, being late for performances while playing video games - don't we all want to just mother him?

Sure, perhaps he doesn't always help himself. Aiming to quash rumours of being in receipt of professional help, Bieber wrote recently on Instagram: "if Anyone believes i need rehab thats their own stupidity lol I'm 19 with 5 number one albums, 19 and I've seen the whole world."

His success is an interesting phenomena. The power he has over his fans - or the Beliebers - is something quite remarkable, and strangely peculiar. It is no surprise that they self-indentify as beliebers, playing on believers, as well.

As an experiment on Friday afternoon I refreshed his Twitter page for 4 minutes to see the fluctuation in his follower count. At 16:19 he had 35,996,754 followers. A minute later that figure was 35,996,608. Many hundreds of people followed and unfollowed him in that time, but in what must be a very rare occurrence after that minute passed he was left with fewer followers.

On a much larger scale this was not the first time Bieber had lost so many followers. After having his haircut a while back many of the Beliebers stopped following him on Twitter in protest. Some 80,000 of his fans pressed the button on their Twitter pages that once said following, and now read follow - to which they so rebelliously declined.

After looking again at 16:21 he had 35,996,925 followers, 16:22 that figure was 35,996,991 and by 16:23 it was 35,997,086. In four minutes Bieber gained 332 more followers - some two hours after his last tweet - such is his power. It would be interesting to see how many followers he gained right after a tweet (though I was not prepared to wait around for that to happen).

Bieber has more beliebers than Shintoists, Sikhs, Jews, Jains Wiccans and Rastafarians have followers. With the last three he has more beliebers than them put together. Most religions have observed in the past few years a decline in their followers. One rather biased looking Wikipedia page on this very issue reads:

Factors related to and influencing the religiousness of young and emerging adults include religious participation, peer influence, parental influence, and risky behaviors such as gambling, sexual behavior, and delinquency.

But if Bieber seems to, by himself, fill this void, is he only bolstering the sexual delinquency of young people today?

In a long essay for the London Review of Books by Michael Herbert Miller, on Bieber, he points out, "Most of the lyrics [on his song You Want Me] are still embarrassingly naive, but he sounds older. His voice is huskier. The sentiment is more overtly sexual, too".

Though Miller doesn't believe this himself, this might rattle critics who suggest that young people are more interested in pop music than they are good morals and high ethical standards, which is what explains the noted risky behaviors of gambling, sexual behavior, and delinquency.

But as Miller demonstrates, Bieber is far more than that. Before he was being bullied in the press, and receiving the negative attention which has worried parents of beliebers, he was a noted good example of someone able to enjoy life, which can be a source of inspiration to a Godless youth.

For every time we hear of Bieber swearing or getting his kit off, it ought to be remembered that he was the author of these fine words:

"Life is a roller coaster. Just know when u dip low it is only to build excitement as u will fly high again. Enjoy the journey".

Think he's a hedonist? Think again:

do something for someone else. #giveback

This piece of good advice received 76,529 retweets, and 45,186 favourites (at the time of writing). As far as demigods go, with their ability to hold the attentions of young people the world over, you could get far worse than Justin Bieber (who by the time I had finished writing this had 36,001,652 followers).]]>How Do We Solve a Problem like Debt Trapstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27743462013-02-27T12:13:05-05:002013-04-29T05:12:01-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
The much reported research by Pew Charitable Trusts, Payday Lending in America: How Borrowers Choose and Repay Payday Loans, notes that some fifty-eight percent of payday loan borrowers have trouble meeting monthly expenses at least half the time, and a worrying seventy-eight percent of borrowers rely on information from lenders, not independent market analysts or comparison sites, when choosing to borrow money.

Furthermore, it was found that twenty-seven percent of payday loan borrowers say the loans caused them to overdraw from their accounts and seven out of 10 borrowers used these loans to pay for essentials such as rent, utilities and credit card bills.

This, by chance, comes as we find out mainstream banks are providing cover for activity from collections of small dollar loans. While big firms like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo do not directly deal in advance loans, it was found by the New York Times that they enabled online payday lenders to deduct payments from customer accounts, even in the 15 states where such loans are banned.

With this dent in the reputation of payday lenders across the US, some representative organisations have sought to fight back. Responding to the Pew research, the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) have said in a statement: "In our current economy and constricted credit market, it is critical that consumers have the credit options they need to deal with their financial challenges."

This is a very typical justification of the type of product payday lenders sell. Effectively what is being said here is that payday lenders are given license to sell expensive credit to vulnerable people because of a failed banking system. In other words, banks are acting irresponsibly, so why shouldn't payday lenders capitalise on that?

But if these lenders were responsible they would admit that their product is not financially beneficial for the vast majority of their customers, and that cheaper products, like those from a credit union, would be better.

The trouble is if a lender did admit this they would be limiting the profit they could draw off the backs of the poor, while reducing the lifespan of their business. We might do well to ask ourselves: can we trust a business that relies on poorer consumers for profit to admit to them that they are ripping them off?

The answer, I think, is no. So you might say the solution here is more regulation. But the regulation is already there. On banks giving cover to online payday lenders for example the Federal Trade Commission has authority to take action against illegal payday lending under federal laws such as Electronic Funds Transfer Act. The issue here, according to the Centre for Responsible Lending, is not regulation, but enforcement.

Of course more could be done. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who have responsibility over regulating credit providers, plan to extend its consumer complaint system to include short-term credit in the third quarter of this year, according to reports by Business Week.

Richard Cordray, the CFPB's Director, has also promised to work further with state attorneys general when they encounter "jurisdictional issues" related to products that can lead to debt traps.

In the mean time more could be done to make consumers aware of responsible alternatives such as credit unions. A payday loan can cost an individual on average around $15 to $30 in fees on every $100 borrowed which means that a loan of $300 with $20 fees will cost $360 if paid on time. If a loan's lifespan is two weeks and you pay it in four, the overall cost could end up being $420 (perhaps more if there are high late charges).

For a loan from a credit union the price is completely different. In most outlets a sum between $100 and $300 can be borrowed for a small application fee of $15, and can be extended from between 4 and 37 days, with a small interest rate of 15 per cent. A cost comparison between payday loans and credit union loans show the latter to be far cheaper, while they also offer budgeting and debt management advice.

While many states have gone to great lengths to curb the sway of payday lenders there is still more work to go. More enforcement by the law, better understanding by the regulators and increased focus on responsible alternatives. As Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, vows to change how the bank deals with Internet-based payday lenders, more banks should reassess their policies.

Everyone should be able to enjoy tootsie rolls if they so wish, but they shouldn't have to be in a dangerous debt trap to do so.]]>On Pope Benedict XVI: Fact From Fictiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27152492013-02-19T05:36:41-05:002013-04-21T05:12:02-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
One Stuart Wilde, a metaphysics writers, has alleged that a meeting will take place between the Pope and the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, where the subject of full immunity from the prosecution for crimes against humanity will be raised.

Immediately this was countered by asking a simple question: why would the Pope resign, renouncing not only his Papacy, but also his immunity as a head of Vatican City, a sovereign state (as it has been since the the 1929 Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Holy See)? Even if the Vatican's sovereignty was called in to question, the Holy See has a special status in international law which gives it rights that are in some cases analogous to sovereign rights.

One does not have to like these facts (indeed as a non-Catholic I benefit nothing from repeating them), but such they are.

It has been noted elsewhere that a country could file crimes against humanity against the Holy See, under international criminal law, in a country where the principles of universal jurisdiction are held such as Germany or Belgium. As it was noticed in 2010, however, the international criminal court (ICC) has no retrospective jurisdiction prior to its creation in 2002, and public or private prosecutions brought against Pope Benedict would first have to convince the Crown Prosecution Service that he was somehow responsible.

This brings us on to the next issue that has again been raised now that Pope Benedict has decided to call it a day: that he was personally to fault for covering up persecution of children within the Catholic Church.

Whatever warm words he uttered as pope, it is [his] record of action - and inaction - that matters more... despite his age and the reverence of the office he soon vacates, he should answer for his actions. Not only in the next life, but here and now.

Freedland goes on to list the accusations that are levelled specifically against Pope Benedict, including withholding knowledge, personally covering up instances of paedophilia and using ineffective, in-house forms of rehabilitation for criminals.

The latter is a common retort about Canon Law (that it is law above the rule of law and a cover for 'Papal secrecy') when in fact it only deals with issues inside the church, not excluding the police or civil law. The other, very serious accusations, ask questions of Pope Benedict's record when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as when he was the Archbishop of Munich.

Anybody not familiar with the story of Father Hüllermann is advised to read this report by Tristana Moore for Time Magazine - detailing aspects of paedophilia in the church, mismanagement at a local level, and the unsubstantiated accusation that one Father Gerhard Gruber, the then vicar-general of the Munich Archdiocese, took responsibility for employing a criminal, thereby being a scapegoat for the current Pope.

Many realise and condemn the failings here, but to hold Ratzinger personally at fault here ignores two things: 1) somebody else more local to the issue took responsibility for the failure, and to suggest a conspiracy is to ponder on something that can not be substantiated upon; 2) the unlikelihood of such extreme micro-management by the current Pope - a point which is hard to prove and only made by that hammerhead of good journalism Johann Hari for the Daily Mail in 2010.

Some, like Geoffrey Robertson QC, suggest that the current Pope personally benefitted from cover-ups so he himself could ensure against the ruinous reputation of the church - running contrary to the work he did initiating strict new norms for dealing with sexual abuse cases, in his words "ridding the filth".

Take, for example, the prosecution of Mexican paedophile Priest Marcial Maciel. Amidst criticism from the likes of Cardinal Angelo Sodano and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the current Pope sought his prosecution with immediate effect. This was no easy win. Maciel, it is noted, was a ferocious fundraiser, having secured assets worth around €25billion - but Pope Benedict, here, put principle before finances.

The uncomfortable issue for many Catholics is that for the current Pope to get the attention he deserves for dealing with abuse, he may in turn tarnish the reputation of former Pope John Paul II. It is alleged that John Paul ignored canon law charges against Maciel and when Ratzinger advanced the case for a full investigation, his opponents blocked the inquiry.

There is significant contradiction in accusing the current Pope of ensuring his good name at the expense of Father Gruber, when neglecting to mention how modest he is about his record compared to his predecessors. Surely, we can oppose the current Pope's politics and theology whilst nothing that there are important claims about him that can not, and are not, yet substantiated.]]>Clear Prose Lover or Sesquipedalian? Or, Can I Love Will Self and George Orwell Simultaneously?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25281952013-01-22T14:55:42-05:002013-03-24T05:12:02-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/as easy as falling off a log". So, could we start to combat this with avowedly more complex curriculum material and tougher demands on pupils?

The author and columnist Will Self once exemplified his own daughter's educational duties as proof of limp expectations in schools. She was given a well-known Dickens book to read, but was informed of the ending by her teacher on the grounds that:

having read the little gobbets served up for interpretation, according to her pedagogue there was no necessity for her to try and choke down the whole indigestible meal.

For Self, setting students to read the whole "meal" (as he puts it) would adequately prepare them for tougher battles and encourage the passion to seek bigger and better challenges. In fact he uses this notion to justify his own use of obscure, and long, words in his fictional work.

Long acclimated to the perception that he uses unfamiliar, and uncommon, words in his writing, Self understands this as a sort of anti-intellectualism. But he recognises there is more to it than that. More than anything many of us approach the written word as something that should simply inform, not challenge us.

On the other hand, the written word poses challenges anyway, so the most effective way to communicate this challenge is to simplify. This was the primary lesson George Orwell taught us in his influential text The Politics of the English Language.

In it, Orwell poses six lessons which will markedly improve writing and, despite the message behind it, help turn bad writing in to good. They were:

- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

We can see from the second lesson where the conflict between what Orwell appreciated in good writing, and how Self prefers to practice it, are. However it should be appreciated that Self's sesquipedalian ways are not for their own sake, nor do they fall into some of the other lessons that Orwell mentions in his 1946 essay.

Orwell raised the alarm about pretentious diction and meaningless words, too. In the former, words like phenomenon, element and objective might be used by writers to "give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements", while using foreign terms like mutatis mutandis, gleichschaltung or weltanschauung may be employed to "give an air of culture and elegance." In the latter, words like romantic, sentimental and vitality might be used simply to replace blank space with something rather than nothing.

Aside from Self arguing that his "texts were as full of resolutely Anglo-Saxon slang as they were the flowery and the Latinate", his insistence on the uncommon word is neither meaningless nor designed to hornswoggle the reader into submission.

For him it is nothing more than a way to rekindle the love of the word, and a sure fire way of avoiding the acceptance of what he called "a banal middlebrow culture".

In this sense Self does not contradict the wishes of Orwell in using a long word where a short word will do, because no shorter word would suffice. Instead, to eschew a world of the watered down and the vulgar, only an appreciation of the depth of the English language will do. Orwell would have understood the need for this.]]>Cameron's Fall Between Scylla and Charybdis in Europetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24732952013-01-14T13:47:11-05:002013-03-16T05:12:02-04:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/Les Miserables, used the notion of tomber de Charybde en Scylla to describe the staging of two rebel barricades in the final scenes of his 1862 book. In it he refers to the Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple. Indeed in the UK today, David Cameron is drifting between a devil and the deep blue sea over how to tack his EU speech, which is now due for delivery on Friday.

It's not for me to decipher which is which, but the figures Cameron rests between are his own backbenchers on one side, rooting for an 'associate membership', and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the other, keen for Britain not to exit the EU.

Previously it has been felt that Merkel wanted Britain to stay in so much that she was willing to accommodate for any of Cameron's demands. Now she endeavours to re-revise major revisions to EU Treaties which Cameron was set to use to renegotiate the terms of British membership.

Proof that Merkel's inner circle is now less sympathetic to Cameron's demands are shown by the recent words of a Merkel ally Gunther Krichbaum, who said the UK were seeking to blackmail EU partners in its bid for a new relationship with Europe.

Cameron knows that he could have kept Merkel onside and made some signals towards the repatriation of powers if he had been complicit with Merkel's wishes in staying in the EU and negotiating changes while keeping a 'seat at the table.' But at home the friction in his own party, and the attraction of Ukip to Tory eurosceptics, is becoming too much.

Cameron is pitching his negotiations after his reelection, if he is reelected (which doesn't look hopeful reading current polling). Even though there is an election in Germany this year Cameron would be cautious not to hope too much for a more sympathetic chancellor afterwards. Merkel will probably stay.

Even though there is some minor excitement around the left(ish) players ready for the fight before September, like the Pirate Party (possible left wing coalition partners, already having leadership problems), Merkel's premiership, and tutelage over the eurozone, will not be put into jeopardy.

Unfortunately for Cameron there is no way to please both his backbenchers, who will be key to the reelection victory he so hopes for, and Merkel who will be the voice in his head the whole time Britain keeps its seat in Brussels.

In order for Cameron to stand up to threat of Ukip, he will have to talk tough on Europe, which as Tony Burke has already suggested, risks losing the UK's commissioner in Brussels, banks on trade with BRIC countries making up the 57% of trade with the EU that we put into jeopardy, and green lights possible attacks on basic employment rights.

However he probably knows that he will be more effective in than out in reordering changes in Europe for the UK. All sense has been lost on the matter of Europe in the Tory party, and Cameron, instead of challenging it, has been swallowed up by it.

Fallen between Scylla and Charybdis, Cameron has made his choice - and it is pitiful.]]>Capping the Costs of Legal Loan Sharks is a Step in the Right Directiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22943312012-12-13T13:07:05-05:002013-02-12T05:12:01-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
But it hasn't been met with all round enthusiasm. Russell Hamblin-Boone, Chief Executive of the Consumer Finance Association - a trade body for some payday lenders - said in a press release that the "CFA welcomes any move which promotes responsible lending and drives out rogue lenders", but told the BBC in a report that setting a cap will drive lenders out and reduce choice in the market.

In actual fact, despite Hamblin-Boone's pessimism, the cap is a good thing and it can work.

Many critics believe that if you set caps on the cost of credit, which will directly impact upon extrortionate charges raised by payday lenders and legal loan sharks, the illegal loan sharks will indirectly gain.

But the evidence suggests otherwise. France and Germany, like the UK, have very large consumer credit markets, however the UK also has a very large payday lending market, with only the Netherlands and Latvia closely behind it. Countries like France and Germany cap their interest rates from anywhere between 15 to 200 per cent. Moreover, research by the European Commission shows that France and Germany had no rise in illegal lending after it introduced caps on credit.

Other critics say that caps on credit will hurt economic growth. There is no evidence for this either. In fact the opposite may be true, given that a decrease in over-indebtedness will influence the building up of savings and investment.

The truth is a cap on the cost of credit will drastically reduce the amount that a loan will cost from an expensive high street lender. Councillor Mike Harris, from Lewisham, told the BBC recently that when he took out a payday loan he paid the £100 he borrowed back in a single week and was still charged £20 for the pleasure.

Credit unions in the UK, rather ironically the only financial institution to have an interest rate set for it (26.8%), charge a lot less. In addition to the funding that it will receive from the government, more money should be spent on the industry in order to ensure it can extend more loans, as a responsible lender, to people who would otherwise be taking out payday loans - particularly around Christmas (researchers at R3 estimate that 500,000 people will take out loans before Christmas this year).

The UK, unique in Europe, has not had any interest rate caps since 1974 when the 1948 Moneylenders Act (which capped interest at 48 per cent) was succeeded by the Consumer Credit Act. But what the government have decided to carry from an amendment to the Financial Services Bill is allow the FCA to prohibit the charging of costs above an amount which it specifies as extortionate and the charging of certain types of fees which it considers to be unacceptable.

This is welcome news and a step in the right direction. For those who say it won't work or that it will hurt the economy are simply not looking at the facts.]]>Perhaps Francis Fukuyama Was Correct About Capitalism in 1989tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21046642012-11-09T18:28:05-05:002013-01-09T05:12:01-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/Redrawing the Maps at Somerset House, London, exploring the life and work of the artist, novelist and poet John Berger (now in his 86th year).

I did my talk on Berger's worldview, discussing his Marxist politics and what indications we can find in his work that suggests he may be rather pessimistic about a socialist future. I spoke for twenty minutes and then the floor was open to those who had come to listen and take part.

One of the questions put to me was: "OK, so Berger self-identifies with a set of politics, but this may not exactly bear out in his work - is this important?"

The question was not meant to be antagonistic, it was a fair point - and one which many people not interested in Berger, and his work, may ask: so what about this man?

My answer to this question is that Berger's pessimistic politics reveals quite a lot about where we politically are in general; that is to say it must be noted that, whatever our politics are, we ought really to accept that capitalism has won the toss.

One cannot help think of Francis Fukuyama in this sense. In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fukuyama opined that this event was proof that liberal democracy ruled the day, and that no other totalising economic situation could ever come close to its dominance.

The cultural theorist and 'Elvis of philosophy' Slavoj Žižek once admitted that even Marxists like himself are quietly accepting of the fact that capitalism had won and socialism had lost. The tasks therefore of anti-capitalists was simply to make the best they could from within the system they hated.

This sort of 'realism' has a snazzy name in intellectual circles today - that is, an interstitial model. Erik Olin Wright, author of Envisioning Real Utopias, defines the interstitial model as a means to build new forms of social empowerment in the niches and margins of capitalist society.

In many ways the Occupy movement was an example of an interstitial vision in that it used the occupied space not simply as a place to discuss tactics regarding the eventual overthrow of capitalism, and build a new world order - but rather designed a microcosm of the sort of society that the activists desired more generally, holding free lectures, discussing politics and meeting friends without the trappings of advertising and consumer capitalism.

To be fair, however, for advocates of an interstitial vision, creating small spaces within the larger context of neoliberal capitalism is not necessarily an end in itself - but a means to an end, trying to out-compete the set of over-competitive social relations that are inherent to neoliberal society.

But for some who have accepted that capitalism is here to stay forever, despite the best efforts of socialists and Marxists, then an interstitial vision is all some have to stay positive.

When I gave my opinion at Somerset House that John Berger seems to have resigned himself politically to this 'realism', one person noted that when he said in 2007 "I'm still among other things a Marxist", that he was actually belittling Marxism by saying that it was no longer a totalising system that could inhabit the entire body of society and economics in the same way capitalism can and has. Instead, perhaps, it has been resigned to a pipe dream that exists in little enclaves rather than as the grand system that its theoreticians had hoped for.

During the session I was told that in another essay Berger mentioned two supermarket workers that he had observed, who, in among the crowded bolshiness of the capitalist setting, set eyes on one another for a second and smiled. This, Berger said, was a little moment of freedom. However it shouldn't go unnoticed that this smile was only noticeable and interesting because it was contrasted with the backdrop of a moribund consumerism. It has been my contention that Berger's politics of freedom is necessarily sustained by small moments of liberty, behind which is the unchallengeable horror of capitalism.

Even Francis Fukuyama changed his opinion in 2002, by saying that it wasn't neoliberal capitalism that was the end of history, but that that could be challenged through the jeopardisation of human dignity, nature and freedom in the advancement of biotechnology. However I here risk sounding even more radically Fukuyamian than Fukuyama himself - in saying that I think he was probably right.

Capitalism, or "the prison" as Berger referred to it in 2008, is here to stay so we had better get used to it. Many people who are advocates of capitalism have assumed this the whole time, and implicitly mainstream politicians today see this as standard. Nobody is at all threatened by the reds under the bed anymore.

But the reason Berger's thesis - that any freedom we are lucky enough to experience is entirely sustained by the 'prison' of neoliberal capitalism - should be of interest to everyone today is that even Marxists and socialists are assuming this point to. Capitalism has won. Socialism is dead.]]>An Elizabeth Warren Win in Massachusetts Will Be Good for Consumerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20692082012-11-05T10:42:12-05:002014-01-23T18:58:21-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
Harvard professor Warren, a long time advocate for consumer protection, shot into political stardom when she worked on the implementation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- an outcome of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which had been signed into law by President Obama in July 2010.

The remit of the bureau includes some of the financial products and services that in recent years have been notoriously detrimental to the very consumers Warren has always sought to protect. Payday lenders, mortgage brokers and check-cashing firms have rightly been targeted by Warren in her quest for a fair deal for the most vulnerable in the U.S.

As a British researcher on the payday lending industry in the UK, I have noted the evolution of the industry as it has emerged from the U.S. Fifteen years ago virtually no payday lenders -- which bear resemblance to 'salary buyers' who would buy, at a discounted price, a borrower's next wage packet -- existed. Now at least 5 percent of all U.S. citizens have taken out such a loan.

The industry began in the early 1980s -- largely the outcome of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act in 1980, which was a reaction by the federal government to the rise in inflation, overriding existing state usury laws, giving way to the elimination of interest rate limits.

Many states stepped up their laws towards usury, but the payday lenders who didn't emigrate (to places like the UK) linked up to banks and rebranded their products as bank loans, working as best they could within stricter rules.

This, by no means, limited the reach of payday lending. Today there are now over 20,000 payday loan shops in the United States -- more than McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger Kings nationwide.

Paul Leonard, director of the California office of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), pointed out: "it's a myth that these loans are meant for one-time use. They are a trap for -- and the lenders business models rely on -- repeat borrowing."

The Consumer Federation of America found that families earning $25,000 per year with no emergency savings were eight times as likely to use payday loans as families in the same income bracket with more than $500 in emergency savings.

In states like Tennessee (4th poorest state) and South Carolina (5th poorest state) there are five payday loan shops for every 10,000 households.

Elizabeth Warren's work thus far has been to ensure a better deal for consumers in the poorest households -- and she insists that she will continue to do this work as senator if she wins this week. While the televised debates between her and her opponent have seen Brown take low blows (highlighting on the wage she draws from her academic post), this speaks volumes about the strength of her politics and hard work for consumers.

A new poll by Public Policy Polling has shown that Warren is ahead of Brown 52 percent to 46. Though voters must not be complacent. Warren's great work proves her worth in this election, and though I can't vote for Warren myself (though I would if I could), I'd recommend anyone in Massachusetts to vote wisely.

Elect Warren for a better deal for consumers and the squeezed Middle classes.]]>Payback to Payday Lenderstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20054912012-10-24T19:00:00-04:002012-12-24T05:12:02-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/blog post yesterday noted, will potentially include the capping of interest rate charges.

"Power of the FCA to make further provision about regulation of consumer credit

(1) The FCA may make rules or apply a sanction to authorised persons who offer credit on terms that the FCA judge to cause consumer detriment.

(2) This may include rules that determine a maximum total cost for consumers of a product and determine the maximum duration of a supply of a product or service to an individual consumer."

It's a long shot; there have already been tabled hundreds of amendments to the bill and not one has gone through. It also follows a similar amendment made by Stella Creasy MP earlier this year, which also failed to get approval - which communicates the coalition governmnent's message loud and clear: there is nothing wrong in this area, of payday lenders, and we're sticking to that!

Only, that is far from the truth.

Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Treasury select committee, back in January this year viewed the creation of the FCA as an opportunity to improve upon the way in which the Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulated financial products.

However he did add a sobering comment: "If we are not careful, the FCA will become the poor relation among the new institutions."

This is precisely what will happen if Lord Mitchell's amendment isn't carried, and upon the heads of the government it will be.

Regulation of this controversial industry has already been called into question and proof of its inability to self-regulate has been proven time over.

The regulatory authorities, too, have clearly been shown not to have a grip on irresponsible lending. In 2010 the OFT's guidance (which the FCA will replace later this year) for creditors on irresponsible lending pointed out that:

All assessments of affordability should involve a consideration of the potential for the credit commitment to adversely impact on the borrower's financial situation, taking account of information that the creditor is aware of at the time the credit is granted.

But the OFT admit themselves that they haven't got the capacity to oversee each and every case of irresponsible lending.

Recently BBC reporter Richard Bilton collected nearly £1000 from payday lenders in under two hours, with relative ease and little questioning. At no point did any of the shops that Bilton entered assess or consider the adverse affects these loans could have on him - thus they were in breach of the OFT's guidance.

Back in June, councillor and journalist Rowenna Davis demonstrated the ease with which this under-regulated industry deals out expensive cash, with few checks, by visiting shops herself, being lent money to cover food, bills and even betting on a horse.

This industry is growing fast by the day, after being given a great boost by the recession, and it is high time the government gave the regulatory architecture some teeth to make sure vulnerable people aren't being exploited to the detriment of their personal finances further.]]>Are We Seeing Real Change in Cuba?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20013482012-10-22T11:23:12-04:002012-12-22T05:12:01-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/
To be sure, Cuba is in trouble. Mirroring many other countries, shortfalls in state budgetary coffers has necessitated a series of measures to bring money in so as to ensure the benefits normal Cuban citizens do have are safeguarded.

Unfortunately Cuba has already had its 'New Economic Policy', to remember back to the Soviet Union. Back in 1921, while the state owned all banks and large industries, the USSR allowed for small business to be freed up in the hope a better economy would result.

Similarly in Cuba, the promotion of small enterprise has been one of the changes key to the Castro brother takeover. However where in Russia it created little more than a short spell of packed theatres, luxurious furs and diamonds, in Cuba it has produced not much at all.

The next stage, therefore, was to take another look at how permitting travel to more Cubans would benefit the economy - even though this lack of freedom has always been dictated by the Cuban leadership as a small price to pay for the revolution.

Jose Barreiro, the deputy minister of labor and social security of Cuba, recently admitted the reason why this was on the cards: "[as a] measure adopted while thinking of people coming from the overly staffed government sector as well as others who are not occupationally engaged".

So the government, after its layoff plan, is now worried that the private sector, which has always been constrained, cannot contain those who are now finding themselves workless.

The lifting of exit visa requirements has two connected, supposed benefits; namely that it will offer workless Cubans a chance to seek employment in other countries (you can be out of Cuba for 24, not 11 months now, before you lose citizenship and healthcare benefits), while also bringing back entrepreneurial expertise on return.

But this is a big ask of citizens to a country who have never enjoyed easy access out, either to work, travel (not financially viable for many Cubans) or see family abroad. On this, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a former government economist turned dissident, recently said: "Those who do come back, I don't think they'll bring much with them."

That this move excludes professionals such as doctors tells us that the Cuban leadership is still worried that many will be lured by higher incomes and standards of living in countries abroad, for this too has an economic disadvantage. For example 40,000 Cuban doctors and other professionals are stationed in Venezuela in exchange for around 115,000 barrels of oil a day.

On the anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Raul Castro is doing things to Cuba that many citizens once thought unimaginable. The reality though is that Cuba is struggling, as it always has done, and the cure will only bring its own problems to the Cuban leader's rule.

Easier travel for Cubans should be music to the ears to those of us who desire to see change in the country, but unless the government becomes more realistic about what it should do to help its citizens - many of whom are too young to live for the romantic ideal of the revolution alone - coordinated change that brings real benefits, and not just smoke signs of change, remain forthcoming.]]>Show Wonga the Red Cardtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19571152012-10-11T06:55:52-04:002012-12-11T05:12:01-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/reaction post to the news that Wonga's sponsorship with Newcastle United Football Club has carried successfully:

as someone who has written about Britain's addiction to debt for well over a decade, you think I'd be lining up to pour scorn on Newcastle's owners. But I'm not

Knight observes that there was little scorn when the payday lender sponsored former Premier League club Blackpool and what's more, that a slogan is displayed on the front of a shirt does not mean people will then go out and borrow from Wonga. After all, we weren't much better off with Northern Rock, who Wonga have replaced on the front of the shirts.

In sum, payday lending was boosted by the recession and it would be a better use of our time to concentrate on what caused that boost: bad bank lending policy, poor personal finance education and poverty pay.

With the first point, though the noises weren't quite so loud, many campaigners were disturbed that Wonga were winning their battle for respectability by printing their brand on the fronts of football shirts.

Chris Walker for example, editor of Blackpool site Up the 'Pool, told Thom Gibbs of the Telegraph:

"I think it's extremely disappointing to see Blackpool associated with such a company when the Fylde coast is the sort of deprived area where payday loan companies tend to thrive, to the severe cost of working class people in some instances."

With Newcastle being a team with a higher profile, it's not surprising to me that the issue has gained more reach. Moreover - and as per the point of sponsoring football teams - the greater exposure for the company does increase their brand identity and the prospect of selling more loans.

On Knight's point about Northern Rock, he is right to spot slight confusion here. After all Northern Rock signed thousands of borrowers up on 125% mortgage deals - which will cause tremendous problems for those borrowers for years to come.

The difference here is that banks and banking are, in general, healthy for a society and when there is a problem within this sector, we naturally want to see the sector reformed. Banks are a part of civil society, whereas payday lenders are a sign of society losing its privilege to call itself civilised.

Payday lending is an outside agitator, which aims to increase our debt profiles, and when we see problems within it, we tend not to want to reform it, but ensure the reforms within the banking sector price this type of product out.

Many negative things have been given a boost by the recession (illegal loan sharks for example), and we can blame the banks for what they've created, but this does not absolutely absolve those companies who perpetuate the debt crisis in the way payday lenders do.

We can blame the banks for opening a window for legal loan sharks on our high streets, but when those companies lend in breach of the Office for Fair Trading's guidance then the blame must lay entirely with them.

In 2010 the OFT's guidance for creditors on irresponsible lending pointed out that:

All assessments of affordability should involve a consideration of the potential for the credit commitment to adversely impact on the borrower's financial situation, taking account of information that the creditor is aware of at the time the credit is granted.

Wonga are just as likely to ignore this guidance as other payday lenders. During an interview in March 2011 by the Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman, with the opportunity to showcase some examples of, in Gentleman's words, the "web-savvy young professionals that the company believes it's catering to", Wonga decided to showcase Susan. Gentleman writes of Susan:

She finds that with the cost of living rising, her benefits sometimes don't stretch to the end of the month, and has taken out loans with Wonga to buy food, if she's caught short. She's a bit vague, but thinks she's taken out half a dozen loans with Wonga over the past few months...She has had problems with credit cards before, and doesn't have an overdraft, but Wonga gave her credit very swiftly.

Not only will Susan's income be significantly less than that of the average person to take out a Wonga loan, according to Wonga themselves, she manages to be in that category of people who haven't access to mainstream forms of borrowing, has taken out nearly double the average payday loans per year per borrower (three and a half), has taken out exactly double the average amount of loans Wonga customers use and is still an example Wonga felt was a "good representative."

Julian Knight is absolutely correct to say that we must concentrate on the causes as well as the symptoms of the financial crash, debt and poverty in the UK. But this in no way means we should not criticise Wonga and pour scorn on Newcastle United for accepting their cash and granting them more legitimacy.]]>Why the New Atheists Are Bad for Atheismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18973932012-09-19T13:12:40-04:002012-11-19T05:12:02-05:00Carl Packmanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-packman/in their study of the return of religion, and the return of criticism of religion, have aimed to paint a picture of what new atheism is by naming some well-known atheists in public intellectual life and academia.

Thomas Zenk and Ulf Plessentin, researchers in Berlin, have identified the new atheists to be a cross section of people including Richard Dawkins, Alain de Botton and Slavoj Žižek.

As someone (an atheist someone) who has dedicated a lot of time and writing about the new atheists, and how they are detrimental to atheism itself, as well as the study of religion, I almost flipped my lid when I saw Žižek's name in there.

The problem with the new atheists is always that they have been rather confused with their message. At once their books and talks are too ready to dismiss the stories of religion as so much hot air, but usually go to pains in trying to work them out and reveal their "truths" (or lack of).

This is what egged Terry Eagleton that time to start his review of Dawkins' The God Delusion with the memorable line:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the "Book of British Birds", and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

But what really does define new atheism? I think Zenk and Plessentin could find a simple answer here, and I will offer it. Substantially, there isn't much new to new atheism. Atheism can be hostile to religion or not, and that has probably been the case since the time of man began.

Though when we talk about new atheism today we are talking about an intellectual movement, whose main movers and shakers were Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.

New atheism, if you will, was the marketing gloss applied atop their unoriginal ideas to sell books.

What characterised their position was far more interesting than their collective name; and that character was belligerence. Four years ago I wrote a small article for the New Statesman, part of which read:

Since the release of his bestseller ... Gone are the days of the professor dissecting halibut in front of an audience of pre-teens divided into those who are averting their squeamish gazes and those who can't for the life of them turn away. Now, even in his scientific capacity, Dawkins is belligerent.

Back then people accused me of saying nobody could criticise religion, even somebody as cool, calm and collected as that Richard Dawkins.

I think since his remarks on Muslims of late, people have been surprised by the "other side" of Dawkins, particularly the tweet that read: "Poor nice, moderate Muslims, how to cope with all this ridicule? Well, you could leave your religion. Oh I forgot the penalty for apostasy".

But it has always been there. What surprises me is that it was missed by so many - especially atheists.

Why I am not hostile to religion, to explain, is threefold:

- I think it is of utmost importance to recognise, and embrace for intellectual curiosity, the limits of our knowledge of the world. And this acceptance gives no primacy whatsoever to either atheism or religiosity;

- There is something unique and worthwhile in the stories and principles told in the world's religions, particularly (in my opinion) Judeo-Christianity. This is why Žižek is not a new atheist - he too sees why the Judeo-Christian legacy is something that should be embraced for its adherence to Pauline universalism;

- Atheism holds no monopoly over good in the world, nor does it signify anything at all, defined, as it is, in the negative (a-theist, not a theist).

New atheism can be seen to close down, if anything, an important, ongoing and timeless debate on religion and the meaning of life. Rather than promote sapient enquiry, new atheism sought crass answers to questions made of straw.

For that movement Darwin killed God, science existed apart from religion and all ambiguity about the structure and creation of the universe could be unearthed by the rationalists. A pity for them that this doesn't hold true; however good news for the real Brights.]]>